Digital rights management (DRM) is a system technology for protecting and systematically managing rights of a digital content, and provides prevention of illegal duplication of a content, acquisition of a DRM content and a rights object (RO), creation and distribution of a DRM content, a series of protection and management systems on use rights, etc.
FIG. 1 illustrates a configuration of a general DRM system. A DRM system may include a terminal 1, a rights issuer (RI) 2, and a contents issuer (CI) 3. The general DRM system controls a digital content which a content provider has transmitted to a user, so that the content is used only by as many as use rights granted to the user. Here, the content provider is an entity corresponding to the content issuer 3 and/or the rights issuer 2.
The content issuer (CI) 3 issues a protected content (hereinafter, referred to as “DRM content”) using a specific encryption key so that the content is protected from an access of an unauthorized user, and the rights issuer (RI) 2 issues a rights object (RO) related with the DRM content to a user. the user of a terminal 1 having the DRM content and the rights object may use the DRM content.
On the other hand, such a DRM system may be used as a system for distributing an advertisement content to a terminal by an advertisement provider, and consuming, updating and managing the distributed advertisement content. In particular, the DRM system may control each entity so that advertisement content may be consumed, updated and managed in conjunction with a general content, which is not an advertisement content, that is, a non-advertisement content.